A visual artist
who worked on the “Little Bill” cartoon series was not entitled to a royalty
payment each time an episode of the series was rerun, this district’s Court of
Appeal has ruled.

Div.
Four, in an unpublished opinion by Presiding Justice Norman Epstein, affirmed
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Elizabeth Feffer’s dismissal of all claims by
the heirs of Varnette Patricia Honeywood. Honeywood, who died in 2010, at the
age of 59, contracted with Games Productions, Inc. to serve as a consultant on
the cartoon series based on books by Bill Cosby.

Fifty-two
original episodes of the series ran on Nickelodeon between 1999 and 2004, with
reruns broadcast thereafter. Honeywood’s contract provided for a consulting
fee of $1,000 for each episode “in which Ms. Honeywood renders and completes all
services reasonably required” and “$500 per episode royalty in perpetuity.”

Revised
Agreement

In
2009, she and the company revised their agreement, in part by providing that
the royalty payment of $500 “per episode” would inure to the benefit of her successors
and a revocable living trust she had previously set up.

In
their lawsuit, filed in 2013, the heirs claimed that the contract entitled
Honeywood to a $500 royalty each time one of the episodes was broadcast. The
company responded that the contract only provided for a royalty for each of the
52 episodes, and that no other royalties had been paid, nor had any been
claimed by Honeywood.

In
granting summary judgment, Feffer concluded that the contract was unambiguous.
Expert declarations offered by the plaintiffs were inadmissible, she ruled,
because they offered improper legal conclusions about the meaning of the
agreement.

C.A. Opinion

Presiding
Justice Norman Epstein, writing for the Court of Appeal, said the trial judge
was correct.

The
expert declarations, Epstein said, did not meet legal requirements for expert
testimony on custom and usage. Even if they had, he said, they were
inadmissible for other reasons.

“Even
assuming the experts were qualified to render an opinion on industry custom and
usage regarding royalty payments, the declarants provide little to no
foundation for their conclusions regarding custom and usage in the
entertainment industry,” the justice wrote.

“Instead,
for the most part, they opine about the interpretation of the particular
agreement at issue in this case,” he continued. “The court was rightfully
skeptical of the unsupported conclusion that royalty payments are generally the
same as residual payments. And even assuming that conclusion to be correct,
the court did not err in rejecting appellants’ attempt to use industry custom
and usage to ‘contradict the express terms’ of the agreement, which clearly
provide when royalty payments should be made.”

The
jurist went on to say:

“The
language of the agreement is neither ambiguous, nor does respondents’
long-standing interpretation of it, which Honeywood never contested in the
decade before she died, involve an absurdity.”